Nerd Cred

04Jan

I don’t have nearly the nerd cred that I should in order to properly write this post and I’m writing it all the same. I’ve read a lot of negative review’s about The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. While I have not yet seen the film, I noticed that many reviews don’t give the movie the proper scope that they should. I make this claim primarily because I understand that Middle Earth, and its history, are larger than the casual fan give them credit for being.

All of this may seem like hapless nerd-kvetching, but consider: Would a film critic reviewing a Jane Austen adaptation be forgiven for exhibiting little knowledge of (and little willingness to embrace) the film’s source material? How about Tolstoy? The reviews of The Hobbit don’t just indulge, they indeed rely upon both the critics’ and readers’ ignorance of Tolkien’s tale and what it was actually intended to be by the time of the novelist’s death and (more to the point) Jackson’s mid-nineties discovery of it as a possible cinematic blockbuster.

Basically, Seth Abramson is saying that the critics panning this movie don’t know enough about the world that Tolkein created, nor do they have the vision to see how Peter Jackson is presenting that world to us.

Read the rest of the article and let me know if you agree or not. Have you seen it? Did you like it? Why or why not?